Frédérique Lamagnère

Biography

The textile designer Frédérique Lamagnère is graduated from the ENSCI (Ecole nationale supérieure de création industrielle) and ESAM Design (l’Ecole supérieure d’Art Moderne). After an initial experience in the textile industry in New York, she sets up on her own as an independent artist in Paris in 1996. In March 2015, she exhibited her designs in Amsterdam at the “Vive la France” exhibition.

The designer has regularly worked with decorators such as Alberto Pinto and Pierre Yovanovitch, also for fashion houses’ studio such as Chanel, Christian Dior, Christian Lacroix, Givenchy and Asprey, producing weaves and unique pieces. In June 2018 for the first time Frédérique Lamagnère exhibits her work as an artist, exclusively at Mayaro.

By using different weaving technique, Frédérique approaches many different materials in her Paris studio. Through her craft, she follows the footsteps of great textile artists like Anni Albers or Sheila Hicks. Her Breton origins has fed her sensitivity to light and the changing colours of landscapes influenced by the sea. From her father she inherited a taste for fine art. Perhaps it is her mother, a dentist, who gave her a gift for extreme manual precision or her daughter, the beautiful sunbeam, is a muse of femininity.

Exhibition at Mayaro Gallery

Weaving Light, June-September 2018

Mayaro gallery shields the light on Frederique Lamagnère with the first solo show dedicated to her art. Bringing together 45 original works, the exhibition invits the public to discover the diverse expressions of a craft which uses thread to reveal a sensitivity to the world and transform relationships with space.

The artist’s intuitive approach to colour and sequence brings to the surface an ultra-delicate universe made from “humble” materials such as plastic, raffia, fishing lines or more luxury materials such as silk and gold thread. The pieces presented fill the space with different forms, mural tapestries, overflows, metal thread sculptures, cascading fabric allowing light to filter through like stained glass, screens. Borne of this woven material : light, a state of mind.

For Frédérique Lamagnère, plans for the work are already part of the material. Everything begins with a reflection, a sparkle, a texture. Plastic is cut into strips, organza and leather are cut into ribbons, all with mathematical precision. The framework is ready, the horizon is there. Once the horizontal strips have been prepared, work begins on making the warp, into which all types of weft is introduced : audio cassette tape, laces, fishing line. Rain and sun, vertical rays. The artist transforms all materials, irrespective of their source, with pure intuition about the textile partition that is to be produced : what emerges is a fleeting emotion, a humour, an enlightened feeling, a mental landscape. The cloud hovering over the earth. The memory of a flower. A hymn to joy in the colour of stained glass.

Her work is light emerging from material.

With a sort of self-evidence, or even urgency.

Brutal art, springing up in a delicate, delightful form.